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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25168825">Going to California</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricari/pseuds/apricari'>apricari</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prompt Fills [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Behavior, Crossover, Gen, Pre-Series, death mention, murder mention, on the road</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:48:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,423</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25168825</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricari/pseuds/apricari</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for a prompt sent in by @nornorenor on Twitter, who wanted an SPN/Hannibal pre-series crossover of Sam and Will meeting. Sam is all of his nineteen years while Will gets a short introduction to the idea of a supernatural reality.</p><p>Unbeta’d.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sam Winchester &amp; Will Graham</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prompt Fills [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823560</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Going to California</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was dusty and warm at 7am on the outskirts of the city of Ogden, Utah, and Sam Winchester was not supposed to be there. He’d picked up a ride with a trucker outside Cheyenne that had taken him along the 80, but the trucker took the 84 instead of keeping on, and dropped him at a motel by the exit near Hill AFB. Now he was forty miles north of the road he was supposed to be on. Orientation was in four days.</p><p>He managed to walk to the TA he’d seen on the way in and grabbed a booth at the Iron Skillet. A waitress brought him coffee.</p><p>“Excuse me, Miss. Have you heard of anyone heading west?”</p><p>“Uhm. Sorry, hon.”</p><p>“No one taking the 80?”</p><p>“Not this morning,” said the waitress, and she went away.</p><p>Was Ogden really so nice a town the truckers didn’t even pick up hitchhikers? Sam finished off his toast and drank his coffee. He could ask around himself, but if the waitress’s reaction was anything to go by, the staff wouldn’t want him bothering people. There was a Flying J even further down the road he could walk to, or he could start thumbing...</p><p>“You said you need to go west?”</p><p>A guy sitting at a able near his had spoken up, not ten years older than Sam, with a mop of hair and glasses that didn’t seem to fit him right. He wasn’t looking at Sam’s eyes, but the spot between his eyebrows.</p><p>“Yeah,” Sam said, sitting up. “Yeah, I did. I do.”</p><p>“I’m taking the 80 to the salt flats this morning. I can take you as far as Wendover.”</p><p>“Yeah. I mean—that would really help me out, thanks.”</p><p>“Sure,” said the guy. “Let me finish up.”</p><p>He went back to eating. Sam sat awkwardly in his booth for a moment. He grabbed his plate and bags and pushed himself over to the guy’s table.</p><p>“Mind if I sit?”</p><p>“Go ahead.” It didn’t seem to matter to him. He had an off vibe. Sam waited until Will salted his eggs before he tucked back in to his own breakfast. Could just be a strange guy. Sam hadn’t had any trouble hitching up until this point and he hoped it wasn’t about to start. Dean had always told him stealing a ride was better than hitching—serial killers dumping bodies God knows where, he’d ramble. Sam shoved the thought to the back of his mind. As long as the trouble wasn’t anything to do with hunting, he’d be fine.</p><p>Besides, it was no good thinking about Dean now.</p><p>“I’m Sam.”</p><p>“Will.”</p><p>“Nice to meet you. Are you from Ogden?”</p><p>“Just visiting. I’m flying out tonight.”</p><p>“You on a vacation—?”</p><p>“Conference.” He didn’t look like the conference type. Worn out Columbia clothes, he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. Suddenly, he was standing. “Are you ready to go?”</p><p>Will drove a Subaru compact that smelled like a rental. Even the trunk was spotless. Sam stared at his worn, dirty bags against the perfect black carpeting before slamming the door shut.</p><p>Traffic was heavy in Salt Lake City after breakfast time. Will cracked the windows while they crawled, and Sam was left with nothing much to do, so he counted state license plates like he and Dean used to when they were kids. There was no music playing and Will hadn’t said a word since they’d left the Iron Skillet. Sam wished he’d grabbed a book from his bag before he put them in the trunk. Cars were only quiet if someone was sleeping or Dad was pissed.</p><p>“Thanks again for the ride.”</p><p>“Don’t mention it.” On his own, Will turned on the radio and tuned it to the local classic rock station. Sam almost sighed in relief.</p><p>“You ever been out this way before?”</p><p>“No. First time west of the Mississippi. You’ve been out this way before.”</p><p>“Not Ogden specifically, but yeah, I’ve spent some time out here.”</p><p>“You travel a lot, Sam?” Don’t you?</p><p>“Yeah, how’d you know?”</p><p>“It’s not your first time hitching.”</p><p>Sam watched the car in front of them exit without really seeing it. “No, it’s not. How’d you know?”</p><p>“Just a hunch.”</p><p>For a moment it was just David Gilmour singing as they picked up speed. Will rolled the windows closed. Once they got west of the Salt Lake City suburbs, traffic on the 80 evened out. Great Salt Lake was a mirror, smooth and infinite. Sam thought it was probably six or seven years since he’d seen it—by a back road running along the other side. Any time America felt too familiar he always found a new angle to look at the scenery from a car window. He realized, with a pang somewhere behind his sternum, that there would be some things he would miss after all.</p><p>“How’d you know I’m going farther than Wendover?” Sam asked.</p><p>Will drew in a deep breath through his nose, like he was leaving a daydream. “You’re going to California.”</p><p>Sam frowned. “Yeah, I am.”</p><p>“College, right?”</p><p>That much couldn’t be hard to guess, given his age, though Sam doubted many nineteen-year-olds thumbed to college. “Sure.”</p><p>“Stanford?” He glanced over when Sam didn’t answer. “Sorry.” He sounded sincere.</p><p>“How the hell do you know that?” Will had overheard Sam talking to the waitress, but Sam hadn’t said anything that would’ve given all that away—unless Will hadn’t needed to speak to him before he knew everything about him.</p><p>“I didn’t know I was hitching a ride with a psychic,” he murmured. “Is that why you offered?”</p><p>He caught Will’s side-eye. “You were alone.”</p><p>“Yeah. I’d, um. Shit.”</p><p>“Mm?”</p><p>“It’s just. If you ever ran into my dad or my brother, or any other hunters—I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention me.”</p><p>Will didn’t say anything. Sam felt foolish—barely nineteen, still worried about getting in trouble with his family. It wasn’t like he was going into hiding. He hadn’t told anyone but Bobby where he was going, but any hunter who wanted to find him would be able to, including Dad and Dean. The radio switched over to commercials. If they found him, so what?</p><p>“I wouldn’t,” Will said suddenly. “Mention you.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Sam muttered. “Really. So what, uh—what really brings you out here, Will?”</p><p>“It really was a conference.”</p><p>“What, for like a day job?”</p><p>“Graduate school.”</p><p>Sam stared at him. “You’re in grad school? Seriously? So what, you go to lectures during the day and channel spirits at night?”</p><p>“Something like that,” Will murmured after a pause.</p><p>“What are you in grad school for?”</p><p>“Forensic science.”</p><p>“Oh. Uh. That’s what the conference was about?”</p><p>“No, it was the annual conference of the Entomological Society. I’m writing a monograph.” He stepped off the gas to let a truck by. “Time of death by insect activity.”</p><p>“That’s...useful. Sorry,” Sam said. “I just mean...seems like a lot to do when you can just find out how a person died by talking to them.”</p><p>Will’s face was impassive. He looked like that most of the time, Sam figured. “You have to have evidence,” he said eventually. Midnight Rider played quietly in the background. “Even if you’re sure you know what happened, who did it, you have to have something to show for it.”</p><p>“So you’re working backwards. I guess it’s not so hard when you already know the answer.” Sam watched the car in front of them weave into the next lane. “So you wanna be a cop?”</p><p>“Was a cop, when I was eighteen. I wasn’t really good for it. I’d like to be an agent.”</p><p>Sam balked. “Like an FBI agent.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“I’ve never even heard of that. A psychic in the FBI.”</p><p>“Never?”</p><p>“No way. How’d you even come up with that?”</p><p>Will licked his teeth and stared down the road. “I wasn’t always sure. Still not sure they’ll let me in.”</p><p>Sam shook his head. “Sorry, man, I just...that’s crazy. I mean it’s incredible, but—how did you come up with that?”</p><p>“You have to do something. I could save lives.”</p><p>“Well yeah, but I mean...they always say being psychic means you’ve got one foot in, one foot out. Like hunters but...hunters can choose, they just always choose the demons and monsters and the...bloodshed.</p><p>“No hunter I know could stay grounded enough to live in one place, let alone have a day job. Psychics, they’re the same way. All the ones I’ve met, even the ones that do put down roots, get so caught up...” Sam shook his head. “How can you do both? How do you, I don’t know—balance them?”</p><p>“Day job and the night shift? I’m still figuring it out. I haven’t always stayed in one place either.” He glanced at the rear view. “I travelled a lot when I was younger, like you.”</p><p>“So you just kind of...started doing both.”</p><p>“You’ve never considered doing both.”</p><p>“Not both,” said Sam. “No, I...I quit hunting when I left my family. For this.”</p><p>Will changed lanes. “That bad?”</p><p>“You know what it’s—oh.” He looked out the window at the desert speeding past. “Yeah.”</p><p>They entered a pass between dry brown hills. It was getting hotter by the minute, but the Subaru’s air conditioner chilled the air, and Sam was grateful for it. The horizon danced before his eyes.</p><p>“What’s at the salt flats?”</p><p>“A nice view.”</p><p>“I really caught a psychic on his day off, huh?”</p><p>“The way you described it, Sam, I caught you.”</p><p>Sam laughed. “Yeah, you got me.”</p><p>“Tell me more about hunting. About those ghosts you’ve seen.”</p><p>“I’m not different than any other hunter. The last haunting we did...actually, it was just me and my brother. Local job while Dad was tracking down rumors about some demons at Fort Wayne.”</p><p>“...It went alright?”</p><p>“Compared to how they usually go, sure. Nothing unexpected, just a murder victim. Actually, we could have used your help with that one,” said Sam, grinning. Then he winced. “There were a lot of maggots.”</p><p>“You don’t say,” said Will, slowly.</p><p>“Well we were the first ones to find the body, y’know? It took days. Then Dean and I, we had a big argument about calling the cops or salting and burning him right there.”</p><p>A muscle in Will’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t look away from the road. “What happened?”</p><p>“He’d been dumped in a ditch near an estuary way outside of town. Dean was the one who wanted to salt and burn the body. It was just like any other haunting to him. ‘That’s what Dad told us we should do,’ he said.</p><p>“I wanted to call the cops. Dean thought I was crazy, which, yeah—but the body would’ve gotten back to the victim’s family for a proper burial. Dean pointed out some ghosts that had gotten a proper burial still came back as ghosts, which—yeah. But there was something about the haunting that made me think we could put the ghost to rest and help the family too.“</p><p>“What was it? About the haunting?”</p><p>“The ghost wasn’t really hurting anyone. He was haunting his own family, pretty typical paranormal activity. At least that’s how Dean put it. It felt like—I mean I thought—it was funny. Strange, I mean. The family was still really shaken up b the time we got into town. Ghosts stick around after an unexpected, violent death but this one...”</p><p>“Closure for them,” said Will, “would be closure for him.”</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But it didn’t really matter what I thought. In the end we burned the body,” said Sam. “Dean won.”</p><p>Will nodded like he was the one getting closure for something. Sam shrugged it off. He liked Will. Will just seemed like a strange sort of guy. “You and your brother are close.”</p><p>Psychics must all have that habit of pulling any comfort out of the air. “Sure we were.”</p><p>“Screwed up,” said Will. He glanced too when Sam looked at him, but avoided his eyes. “You’re young.”</p><p>“Yeah, it’s screwed up. But you’ve dealt with ghosts and monsters your whole life.”</p><p>“Sure,” said Will.</p><p>“Then you get what it’s like. And like I said, I’m done with it.”</p><p>“Your family, too.”</p><p>“No, you don’t get that,” said Sam, more angrily than he meant to sound. “It’s some toxic crap.”</p><p>“Missing it is a normal reaction to leaving an abusive situation.” <em>The hell do you think you are</em>, Sam thought. Before he could come up with a different reply, Will said, “I know. I’ll lay off. Sorry.”</p><p>“Good,” said Sam. “It’s creepy.”</p><p>There was a short, sharp sound, like a bark, and Sam realized Will had laughed. “So I’ve been told.”</p><p>The scenery around them burst brightly. He had almost bought Dad’s crap, saying there was nothing to see on the highway. Now he knew Dad was wrong as ever: cloudless blue skies meeting a horizon of all white. It was completely new. Sam took it in; he tapped his foot to Never Going Back Again.</p><p>Shortly, Will pulled into the grey lot of a Sinclair growing out of a patch of salt. He turned down Sam’s offer to pay for gas. “Save it for your books. You’ll need it.”</p><p>Sam got a ride quick while Will was still filling up. A young couple were going all the way to Sacramento. He’d make orientation with a couple of days to spare if he got lucky again. Keyed up, he went back to Will, who had been watching his conversation.</p><p>“Got one?”</p><p>“Yeah, thanks. Here.” He had scrawled two numbers on a piece of paper torn from his copy of Muir essays, and now he gave the scrap to Will. “In case you ever need a hand with anything. That’s me there but...well, I gave you my brother, Dean. You can...you can count on him.”</p><p>Will looked at the paper before tucking it in his pocket. “Thanks, Sam.”</p><p>“Gotta watch each other’s backs, right?” He hoisted his pack over his shoulder and smiled. He meant to say take care, but instead he said, “Maybe I’ll see you again. Down the road.”</p><p>Will looked at him, and his face broke into a smile that echoed Sam’s own—so viscerally, Sam thought if he frowned Will would frown in an instant, like a mirror. “Take care now, Sam, alright?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Sam, backing up. “You too.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title after the song by Zeppelin, of course. Might have forgotten some of my SPN lore, it’s been a while.</p><p>If you’d like to send a prompt, you can find me on twitter @apricarimy. DMs are open or you can reply to the pinned tweet.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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